The Body In Zazen

[redraven]

I have been doing zazen for a while, and in my meditation today I began thinking about how important the body is in zazen. You would think that meditation requires a lot of thinking, but zazen doesn't. The problem is that you have to constantly check your posture. I push my hips forward and sit like the good monks I see in pictures, but my posture slips, and then when I notice I must readjust. The same goes for the mudra, it must maintain its position, and when it slips it must be readjusted.

In zazen I am not supposed to control breathing or blinking, and I am supposed to keep my eyes open and let myself blink normally, naturally. I close my eyes for a while and open them for awhile, because I'm a beginner and it's easier.

Also in zazen I am NOT to control my thoughts, but I am not to become too involved in them. This requires a kind of detachment. When certain things enter my mind in zazen, and they will, they provoke a reaction, and the goal is not to react.

All of this leads me to believe, as Shunryu Suzuki has said and I didn't understand until today, that I am to concentrate on posture while doing zazen, and really nothing else. The important thing is to sit the right way, and nothing else. This is very hard, because my back aches, and my fingers keep separating and my thumbs relaxing. I did it correctly for just a few minutes today, and it was my best zazen session to date.

I've tried to do it for twenty minutes today, but my record is 16 minutes. It's very hard, but my mind is so clear the rest of the day, even if it is not clear at all in zazen.

Just some personal experience. I'd like to hear other people's personal experience with this PART of meditation, for this thread. Leave the satori experiences and kensho experiences for another thread.

[redraven]

For instructions on how to do zazen, see here.

http://www.ibiblio.org/zen/faq.html

[CSwriter1]

Thank you for that site. Most certianly it is a focus on the body, as such care is taken in positioning the body.
I attempted only the hand poses for a few minutes and noticed uncommon awareness of my hands and arms.

I feel inspired to adjust my living to this practice. I have a small living space. Sitting on the floor is not practical for me, so I would like to construct a place to sit that is off the floor with a shrine. It could helpful if my environment induced the desired behavior.

[redraven]

I'm sure you have back problems or something, but I HIGHLY recommend buying a thick cushion and sitting on the floor if you don't. They have ones specifically for the purpose, but a pillow with a lot of stuffing will do.

Otherwise, feel your way out; sitting on a high chair is unusual in Buddhist countries, and not here. It's the only precept that I don't follow on Vasekh. Maybe if you could sit cross-legged on a chair? I don't recommend full lotus (Don't kill me Zen masters) because even if you can do it you'll end up with bad knees. Half lotus is great if you can, and when I can I'm going to alternate days, left and right, to balance the effects of the position.

Try reading an appropriate book and doing a little yoga if you like it before the zazen. I find that kind of primes me to think about things other than my next cigarette. My wife has forced me to set a quit date on the next Poya, and I'm really happy about it now. We can't afford it, my lungs are a wreck, and I can't exercise. I'm going to gain weight, and that is the real reason I don't want to do it. I'm fat already. :(

As for a shrine, my wife and I are looking to buy a small statue of Jizo, a small statue of Kwan Yin (my wife loves Kwan Yin) and a small statue of Buddha and put it on some kind of small table so I can pray and make offerings. Right now money is tight, but I'm going to do it.

Just remember that sitting zazen is a trial, and that it usually doesn't feel good. Some days it will seem like every bad memory you have is floating around in your head. This is why we have teachers, but I can't get one, so my advice is that if you're crying, or if the pain is real great, stop your session. If it is consistently intensely painful, stop a week and then restart.

Find a Buddhist temple and hook up with a good teacher if you can. Good teachers usually hate tantra and don't sleep with their students, and generally charge a good fee, but not an overly large fee. Stay away from "donation only" as the person will usually have either no knowledge, or the "donations" will get really large. Usually it's both.

If you can't get a teacher, then just be careful. Don't expect too much, in fact, try not to expect anything, and keep a sound mind about the experiences you'll start having. I also recommend prayer and scripture reading as part of any good practice.

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions, or you can put them here.

[namtso]

redraven, I had a couple of questions about Zazen, sorry if they sound dumb, I know zip about Zazen.

If a person practices Zazen for many years and becomes very skilled and used to it, are there any negative side effects like not being quick and decisive in dangerous situations like jumping out of the way of a car? In other words, being so calm and having such a still mind all the time that the normal instinctual behaviors are impeded?

And what's the deal about crying during the meditation? What percentage of people experience that and why? I read your thread "Satori And Kensho, Pragmatic Definitions of Zen Teaching" also. If a person has made it a habit to analyze or be critical of their own motivations and behavior for many years and tried to make it a habit to be kind, would you still expect their satori experiences to often be painful?

Does Zazen also have the goal to attain enlightenment and liberation from the cycle of birth and death like other forms of Buddhism?

[redraven]

Namtso,

I see why you're confused. One of the things about zazen is that it's very subtle. My every day life is better, but is there any major change? None that I can see.

As for reactions, I think what happens in zazen is that instead of becoming devoid of thought, you become very aware and active. In fact, going into a trance during zazen is a bad thing, you should really be aware as in normal consciousess. Maintaining that while sitting still in that posture, even for the twenty minutes that I do, can be very difficult. I can't imagine being a monk and doing it for hours!

In fact, the Zen masters talk about reacting to each moment as if it were new, not living in the moment so much, as having no expectations and simply doing what is best naturally. So I would say that the point of zazen is to be more aware of the car, and how to react to it spontaneously to save yourself.

Zazen doesn't analyze. I think it is painful because your mind keeps playing tricks on you to mess up your practice. There will be periods where your zazen is very calm, like mine today, and then periods where you just can't stand to do it, like I had yesterday. Satori is often painful, and this is because it is expiating karma, and because it shows you things that can be hard to bear.

However, the final stages of satori are very blissful, and the admonishment at this stage is to come down off the high horse and suffer with people in compassion for them, because it is easier to live in satori than in the "normal waking consciousness." I know this is complex. It has to do with Buddha choosing to teach before he entered Nirvana.

Surely he suffered while he taught, the rejection of nearly everyone, the problems in the growing movement he was leading, and things like this. He could have gone straight to Nirvana, and that is why we have bodhisattvas.

Does that help any?

[MidnightSun]

As for a shrine, my wife and I are looking to buy a small statue of Jizo, a small statue of Kwan Yin (my wife loves Kwan Yin) and a small statue of Buddha and put it on some kind of small table so I can pray and make offerings

Thats common what i wanted to do. So far i only have buddha :)

[namtso]

redraven, that does help some. I can see now how it would help train the mind to have more clarity in the present rather than being so distracted by the monkey mind all the time.

Zazen doesn't analyze

I do think I understand what you are saying here, Zazen is meditation that essentially has you staying present in the moment, not engaging with your random thoughts but just letting them pass by.

Satori is often painful, and this is because it is expiating karma

I am curious about Satori. How do you recognize that your are having a genuine Satori experience as opposed to just deep and focused concentration on something? It sounds as if the Satori experience spontaneously occurs without an intentional guided effort to create it. Is that right? And what is actually occurring to expiate the karma? Is it merely when a person has a spontaneous recognition that they have acted in a negative way (harmful, irresponsible etc. etc.) in the past? Or are there certain standards of ethics and proper behavior that are taught in the Zen discipline that then come in to play during Zazen meditation in recognizing improper past behavior? I'm trying to understand the relationship between an insight, with the accompanying pain, during a Satori experience and how it can then translate into the expiation of karma. And I guess I'd also want to find out how a person can reasonably gage or detect the expiation of karma? Or can you even separate some sort of awareness of a lessening of negative karma from a general change of a person's character and state of mind over some period of time? I know I should crack open a book on Zen myself. It just seems like every Zen book I've looked at just seemed to be full of indechiperable koans and I just got frustrated.

[redraven]

:lol: Inexplicable zen koans! Well, normally in Zen you would have a teacher and explain the experience and he would tell you if it's satori or not. His judgment is made from his own satori experience.

I probably shouldn't have mentioned expiation of karma. Zazen expiates karma by creating mindfulness and thus attacking ignorance, which is the weakest point of dependent generation, and also the most harmful of the problems a human can have.

In order to check that insight for yourself, which some say is impossible, I recommend praying a lot and seeing how that insight plays out. Was it true? Was it delusional? Was it partly true and partly not? (You can have mixed states as I remember.) The best way to test insight is to live well, and do more meditation.

As for Zen ethics, they are remarkably absent. Unlike in Mahayana Buddhism where Buddha's teachings are transient but true, in Zen the Eightfold Path is not even necessary all the time, as nothing is really necessary. This is what I DON'T LIKE about Zen.

When Zen masters teach ethics, they teach next to nothing. A Monastery has rules, they expect obedience, there is even some dogma in Zen. But Buddha's system of ethics is remarkably absent from Zen teaching, and I think it's a bad thing.

I do Zazen because it's simple, and with a good support system like family and friends, not very dangerous. Some of the stuff people do really plays with your mind!

Satori is definitely unguided. I heard of one guy that did zazen with a TEACHER for 20 years and didn't have a single satori experience. (Or at least nothing more than remembering to pick up his checks from the house when he got to his car.)He quit and 10 years later when he wasn't meditating at all, had a deep kensho experience that nearly drove him crazy. After that he was a changed man. I can also tell you that the man was one of the purest meditators I've ever seen, and a really good person. For some reason it just took him forever.

Because I'm a Mahayana Buddhist, but I've only studied zazen, I'd say that my view of zazen is that it's a good thing to undertake, will ALWAYS give you subtle changes in your life and your view of it, will USUALLY give you deep experiences of insight, and will OCASIONALLY take you to the final stages of satori.

That last kind of insight is best done with a teacher, and if you want it, move to San Francisco or New York City and get involved in a solid, stable zen group. Don't fall for the cults. There are a lot of sick "Buddhists" out there.

I'm going to post some koans today, and then I'll give the solutions. Maybe they won't seem indecipherable. But there are a lot of bad books about Zen out there. At some point I may write one that tells people what I'm telling you, because people get all in their heads about Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance and crap like that.

Thanks for the questions.